Harmonix announces music-driven free-to-play shooter Chroma

Rock Band creators head into the F2P space with new IP.

Rock Band creators Harmonix have announced Chroma, a free-to-play, arena-based, "music-driven" first-person shooter due for release on PC later this year.

Powered by Unreal and developed in partnership with Hidden Path Entertainment, Chroma is said to "tie the game's soundtrack directly to combat, traversal and more", as players use music to alter the landscape to provide them with new offensive and defensive opportunities.

It also lets players "unleash streams of sound and music" at their enemies, "from deep wobbling bass to the crunch of an electric guitar, crushing metal drums".

"Chroma has been a dream project of mine for some time," said Harmonix co-founder and CEO Alex Rigopulos. "Watching the teams at Harmonix and Hidden Path begin to bring this vision to life has been tremendously exciting. We're also thrilled to release an alpha version of this game and to evolve it in collaboration with our players. We can't wait to hear what people think of this new approach to both first-person shooters and music games."

A closed alpha is due to kick off later this month. For more details and to register, head through to the game's official sign-up site.